10th day Lake Nasser - 1014km

We left camp this morning in convoy and under police escort through the town of Aswan, and across the sensitive area of the Aswan Dam. After a short ride we regrouped at the dam, spot on 1000km from Cairo. Lots of security and guns, strict instructions not to take any photos. The level of how sensitive the area is can be reflected in the story, that during Egypt's 6 day war with Israel, the Israelis "bombed" the dam with paint as a threat, and knowing the damage and loss of life that would result if it was done for real, the Egyptians ceased fighting pretty dam (!) quickly.

The traffic was stooped and we set of across the dam, my first thought as i looked from the huge body of water on my left to the drained channel on my right , was "its not very wide, for such an important dam", as it was only just wide enough for two cars, but i felt that i had to be suitably impressed, so i was.

Handfulls of Twinkies

Off the dam, we swung to the left and up a hill, and continued, still in convoy for about another 6km, where we stooped at a checkpoint, and waited as our escort spoke with the guards on the barriers. an hour later we were still waiting, not knowing what was going on, munching through our supply of power bars, and waving at the folk in the passing coaches. As time went on a stream of cars started to arrive, each one seeming to contain an officer with more and more gold on his lapels, and finally one turned up with the correct box of red tape, and everyone was happy, and with lots of , shouting and waving we were off again, wondering what all the fuss was about. ....We soon found out, as we crossed another dam, this one was so wide it even had a central reservation of grass and trees growing on it. Turns out that the first dam was the one built by the british at the end of the 19th century and even though it was once the largest in the world, it was this second dam (the High Dam) that was built in the 1960s that was the generater of Lake Noser, ...i couldn't see any paint, but i was suitably impressed!

We reached the docks, and started to prepare to load the bikes, and permanent bags for the 4pm sailing, the trucks had left us the night before to make their own way across, with out our drivers, who were now barred from traveling with them since some woman fell overboard last year. As we were to find out space on the weekly ferry was limited, and we had pre-booked every cabin for this crossing, even so there would not be enough to go around, and Duncan had said that they would be issued in "order of Age", i was offered one, but realizing that there must have been a mistake, turned it down,in faviour of sleeping on deck with the (other) youngsters.

We had to manhandle each bike across two barges onto the ferry, along a walkway covered with diesel and up two flights of stairs, also covered in slippery diesel,  to the top deck, where we quickly started to fill the whole of one side of the railings. we did this between lorries turning up loaded with carpets, Hi Fis, and fridges, all of which were also being loaded by hand by a small army of dock workers along the same stairs and passages. When all of our bikes were parked and chained on deck(all removable items....removed), and all the permanent bags stuffed into every cabin below, I along with a travel companion had to mount the first of a constant hourly watch on the cabins down two corridors to  stop any thieving, and (most importantly) stop the locals from using our toilets. With my duty done,i could start to really take in the scene of (dis) organized mayhem around me.

For a boat that was due to sail at 4, there still seemed rather a lot of trucks lining up to off load, for a while the number seemed to by fixed at around twenty, as each one that was emptied was replaced by yet another. But of all these trucks the ones that stood out were the ones loaded with twinkies, and i mean really loaded, loaded up to 10 meters high, to the point the they must topple over. For those of us that don't know a twinkie is a sponge finger supposedly filled with a vanilla cream, and brought back happy memories to the members of our group that had grown up in the US, or Australia, or just about any where other than Uk it seemed to me. As each twinkie lorry pulled up the driver would climb to the top of the pile and proceed with lots of helpful shouting to the guys below proceed to drop his load box by box into the waiting arms below, the only thing was some times the arms were already full of twinkies, and some times there were no arms there at all! And all the time carpets, boxes of toms, tvs, tables, fridges, and people still kept turning up and had to go some where.

If you are like me when i start to pack a suitcase it all starts fine with everything going in in an ordely way, then as space becomes a bit tight , things start to get crammed in not quite an exact way, until with the taxi waiting at the door, and the case bulging you are jumping up and down on the case. ....Well imagine this ship was that suitcase.....things and people were being stuffed into every nook and cranny, with boxes splitting open and spilling their contents onto the diesel soaked floor, i along with a few others had moved to a corner near the bridge in order to watch and to be out of the way, but as the army of ant like workers carried off their loads of twinkies, and space elsewhere ran out, we started to see a snake of brown boxes heading through the crowd towards us, to be loaded around and in front of the bridge. In order to do this each box had to be passed over our heads, by now their was simply nowhere to move to to get out of the way, so fell into a kind of rhythm with the three workers that were loading our corner, and fell into a kind of disjointed conversation with them each time they appeared with fresh boxes, and finely out of boredom started to help pass the boxes along, much to the amusement of the guys, it was fun and in our own little way thought we were helping to get the boat on its journey.  As the last box of twinkies was wedged into place we quickly received our "wages" of handfuls of ......Twinkies, and with the supprising dissapointed taste of twinkie on my lips i watched the still loaded lorries on the dock fade into the night as we finaly slipped away at 8pm.

The Numbers:-

Distance:- 17km

Time Start to Finish:- 1hr 12mins

Average Speed:- 14.4kph

Max Speed:- 28.7

Twinkies: about 10